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Sunday, February 1, 2009

Probability everywhere!

What a crazy week last week was! My hubby and I were in Vegas for a few days - oh the math that was there! We went out to the Hoover Dam... heard about the hours worked, the budget, the height involved - it's amazing how much number crunching was involved!

And you can't avoid the gambling (and I didn't, I admit!). I mostly play the slots/video poker. I'd love to get my general kids thinking about a 3- or 5-card poker hand when we do probability. Nothing fancy, because I don't know that they could handle it (some of them have issues just dealing with the cards themselves - the suits, the numbers, etc.) but even just with a 5-card hand... If you have 3, 4, 5, 6 and are going for a straight, what possible cards would you need? What's the probability that you get them? It probably wouldn't look too good if I tried to get the kids playing poker online... but they'd certainly enjoy it, I'd think! Or what about probabilities involved in one-deck Blackjack. Hmmm....

I'm watching the last couple of minutes of the Super Bowl right now - what a game! 0:49 left, the Steelers have 1st and goal and are down 23-20. I'd like them to win because Ben Roethlisberger went to my alma mater (Miami U.). As I was sitting here watching, I was also catching up on some of my rss feeds. (Wow - what a catch by Santonio Holmes!!) Over at 360, there's a great post with a lot of probabilities of possible scores. Definitely need to save that one for next year's pregame!

Back to school tomorrow after a week off. It felt like Spring Break! I was off on Monday because of our trip, but came back to 4 days in a row of snow days. (One of which need to be made up now - yuck!) What's the probability of that happening in a district like mine? Next to nil, I'd think.

1 comment:

I'm guessing I would've learned a lot more about probabilities if my teacher had used poker as an example. Great way to make math relative! I keep learning more about you... I didn't realize that you went to Miami too. I was ok with the Steelers winning because of Ben & the Miami connection too!